Share this:

Like this:

I’m letting the title stand as my trigger warning here because I’m going to be writing about some things that have happened over the past month and years. I was in an abusive relationship. It didn’t get physically abusive, but toward the end I was afraid that it might. I need to write about it. It might come out disjointed. I’ll probably talk about my remaining partners’ experiences and feelings as I know them, too. Mostly, I just want anyone who reads this to know and have really fair warning that I’m going to be talking about this experience–for my own health and sanity if nothing else. And I’m a little afraid that said partner will actually come read this and say things or .. I don’t know. I have fears I don’t want to give expression to, I guess.

Share this:

Like this:

This image lives on my desktop. It’s not my background, but it lives as an icon, a thumbnail reminder to myself.

And yet, I rarely obey it.

I’m afraid. I am afraid.

I am afraid of my anger. I’m afraid of all the anger inside me that will come pouring out when I open up about all the ugly, unbeautiful parts of my life. I’ve opened up about some of them, but there are more.

I am afraid of others’ reactions–not necessarily those of strangers, though there’s a certain fear of not being believed. I’m more afraid of those I love–what would they say?

And I know, I know: if they wanted me to say nice things about them, they should have treated me better.

But what about forgiveness?

But forgiveness shouldn’t be compulsory, either. And some things cannot be forgiven at all, and some things cannot be forgiven without being worked through. And some things just aren’t forgiveable things, even if I am angry about them, or hurt about/by them. It’s complicated.

I want to be compassionate. I want to be loving. I want to be a good person.

I know that good, loving, compassionate people also get angry.

And yet, there’s so much messaging that says the opposite–that love and anger don’t go together, that compassion and anger don’t mix, that being a good person and being an angry person aren’t the same thing.

I don’t want to be an angry person. I am an angry person. I hate being so angry all the time. I am so sad that I am so angry. I am so angry that I am so sad. And I am so so tired.

I wish I could just let go of the anger. I tried. I tried to just…put it aside. I tried. But that ended up just building walls inside me, walls I didn’t even realize I was erecting until almost too late, until I almost took my life because I cut myself off so far from everyone and everything around me.

I have to deal with all of these things, but dealing with them means being angry, and I really, really don’t want to be angry.

My wife and I have to fear any time she goes out alone that she may never come back because someone decides they don’t like the fact that her gender is different than the one assigned to her at birth–a thing that is entirely out of her control. You make this threat ever more present, ever more real. That’s not how this should work. You should be on the side of liberty and safety for all citizens, not just the cisgender, white, and male.

Moving on from discussion of my wife: I am a person who deals with depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation. I can tell you that when I come out of the fog of suicidal thoughts, I’m happy to be alive–but when I’m in them, the grip of the conviction to die is strong. It is a mental health challenge.

You have made that challenge much harder to bear, much worse, by making it easier to get guns into the hands of people like me who would harm ourselves, who would–under that terrible fog–end our own lives. And you have not done anything to improve mental health care services, nor access to them.

Moving on from my mental health: my city, St. Louis, has been rocked by racial tensions. We are the home of Ferguson, which exploded open the conversation about race and police brutality. We are one of the cities that has put racial education on the tip of so many Americans’ tongues.

I know the history runs deep here. I do not believe this will solve it. Instead, it will make things worse. We should not have the distinction of being the first state since Trayvon Martin was murdered to pass Stand Your Ground legislation.

We already have so many stories of our black citizens–male, female, trans and cis, child and adult–being killed by gun violence. And this is not about intraracial violence (most violence is intraracial, because proximity matters for crime, and most of us live in proximity to our own racial groups, which is a thing to tackle on a different day). This is about how we set up groups of people to be killed, and then we kill them–either by pulling the trigger ourselves, or by signing the legislation that allows for that to happen so very easily. Please, let’s work to end gun violence by putting restrictions in place, instead of making it easier for people to kill one another.

Race is such a big issue, so huge, and race and violence–I could go on about how we make those things linked for a long time. But there’s are a couple more things I want to cover before I close: violence against LGBTQIA persons and intimate partner violence.

I am a bisexual woman. I have so many queer friends and loved ones in Missouri–including, of course, my wife. The violence at Pulse in Florida occurred just three short months ago. While that scale of violence has not happened here, you make it easier for something like that to happen. My queer loved ones and I are not safe in Missouri. We experience threats and harassment and outright violence all the time. The victory of so-called ‘gay marriage’ did not fix LGBTQIA rights for all time. We are still at risk for violence, and this legislation makes that violence even more likely, even more of a threat, even more present and real and deadly.

As for intimate partner violence: ‘castle doctrine’ and ‘Stand Your Ground’ did not save Marissa Alexander when she faced intimate partner violence/domestic violence. It did not save Bresha Meadows. I don’t think it would save very many of the most vulnerable in our homes–those of us who live with people who harm us and have so little recourse to get out.

You make it so much easier for intimate partner/domestic violence to occur, and so much more difficult for those who experience such violence to actually get free.

Compare the fact that George Zimmerman–who chased down Trayvon Martin, so how could it have been ‘defense’?–got away with ‘Stand Your Ground’ as his defense, but Marissa Alexander, who fired mere warning shots–shots that hit no one, shots that were intended to frighten and were meant to free her and her children from harm–was not shielded at all by either ‘castle doctrine’ or ‘Stand Your Ground’ despite the fact that she did face imminent danger. Consider that Bresha Meadows and her family had been facing imminent danger for so long, and yet she sits in a juvenile detention facility because she saw no other way to freedom for herself and her family–while George Zimmerman roams free.

These laws do not free us. They are not the path to liberty. They do not bring justice.

Please, legislators, understand that we all want to live and love and laugh. We all want to go out in the sunshine and the cool night air and be happy and free of fear. We all want to be able to break free of the harms that plague us. These things–Stand Your Ground and concealed carry without a permit–will not accomplish that for any but the cisgender, heterosexual, mentally healthy, white men among us.

Like this:

I am terrified I will let them down. I am terrified I will disappoint them. I’m terrified I won’t do it ‘right,’ whatever ‘it’ is.

I’m smart. I know I’m smart. But I am afraid to try for any further schooling, because I am afraid of what that means. If I do that…then I have expectations to do things with that education. And that expectation is legitimate–because there’s expense and logistics and time and energy involved in all of that, and it’s not all mine. It’s mostly not mine except for the time and energy. But I am so afraid that I will…say it wrong, write it wrong, get it wrong.

I want so badly to make the people who got me to where I am, to where I would be, happy and proud.

That gets in the way of what I want, sometimes, because I don’t know if that always meshes. I don’t know if it always matches up.

Like, what I have to say isn’t always the same as what the people who gave me the money have to say. Or what I have to say ends up not being liberatory after all, and I fucked it up. Or what I have to say opens up some darkness, some painfulness, some scary things that people in my life don’t really want me talking about.

And that last–I keep trying to remember that I’ve lived it, I’ve earned the right to tell my story, but it’s hard.

And what if I start to do some things, and I’m feeling okay, and I do a few things, and then I wind up back in bed again? I don’t want to be inconsistent. I don’t want to be flaky. I worked in volunteer management, and while I loved every volunteer who showed up, I definitely would call my more reliable volunteers more frequently, because I knew I could count on them. I don’t want to be unreliable. I don’t want to be someone’s pain in the ass, someone’s ‘have to replace at last minute,’ because frequently my body and/or brain betray me day of, and I don’t know it’s coming until then.

And that’s just for volunteering–that’s not even getting into paid work, or academic life, or art. Even here, I’ve been so inconsistent. And I’m glad this space is here, and it’s mine, and I can do whatever I want with it–but I know I set some expectations for myself at the beginning, and I haven’t really met them, not with any consistency.

And all of that is tied to ability–mental and physical health, and I know that. And I know that all of this ‘expectation’ talk is tied to this idea that I have to somehow be ‘productive’ to be valuable, which is baloney. I know that. Intellectually, I know that.

But also, this fear of expectation–I think it’s tied to how I was abused as a child. I was ‘expected’to get straight A’s, and if I didn’t–punishment. I was ‘expected’ to volunteer, do church activities, be a straight arrow, etc. And if I didn’t–punishment. Even if my parents thought I didn’t, punishment. It didn’t matter if I actually followed the rules, because I was punished anyway. I was always punished for not meeting expectations, and rarely rewarded for meeting them or exceeding them.

My grandparents monetarily rewarded me, so there’s that–I would get something like 50 cents for an A and 25 cents for a B, and since I always got all A’s, that was nice. It all went into my college savings fund. So there’s that. But that came out of my grandparents, and not my parents.

I lived two separate realities, even though for me they were the same lived reality.

And I got punished for my grandparents loving me, too. I was mocked and torn down and humiliated for how my grandparents loved me. So that reward system became a punishment, too. That wasn’t my grandparents’ fault. That was my parents’ fault.

I think this system of tearing me down and so rarely praising me around expectations has made me scared to do, scared to try.

I’ve been thinking about art, and I’ve had some inclinations to try art classes again, to brush up on art skills. I did decently in art in 7th and 8th grade and for a little while after, and then I let my skills get rusty. I let them go in favor of the things that got the accolades I needed to get me out of the scary, awful, terrible place with some immediacy. Granted, that means I did theology and languages–which maybe wasn’t terribly practical, but it’s what I did. Anyway.

When I did art, no one thought I could do it. No one thought I had any talent, and I did it all on my own, all by myself. That was all me. And no one ever set any expectations on me about it. Kind of the opposite, really–Mom kept trashing my art. That was a little devaluing, but she never had any expectations that I’d be the next Great Artist or anything.

So I think that’s why I’ve been thinking about it. It’s a thing that no one else has ever given my any expectations around.

Of course, I have my own expectations now–things about race and gender and sexuality ability that go into all of this. But yeah.

Expectation scares me so bad.

Share this:

Like this:

I ‘should’ eat better, I ‘should’ clean more, I ‘should’ exercise more/at all, I ‘should’ read more academic things, I ‘should’ be prepping for academic things, I ‘should’ write, I ‘should’ volunteer, I ‘should’ be in the streets, I ‘should’ do what my colleagues do, I ‘should’ call home, I ‘should’ go outside, I ‘should’ do this, that, the other.

And…yes. I mean, I ‘should’ do at least some of those things, for health. For safety.

But all I think about is what I should do and what my loved ones need and want. And when I fail to do those things or live up to my shoulds, I deprive myself–of things like sunlight and friendship and pleasure.

I decide I don’t deserve to go to that free pleasure event, because I haven’t done enough in my community–regardless of my energy level, regardless of my physical ability, regardless of anything that’s been happening in my personal life.

I decide I don’t deserve sunshine because I haven’t been able to get out of bed for days and weeks at a time.

I decide I don’t deserve a massage to help my aching body feel better because I haven’t lived up to the societal standards of feminine hygiene like shaving–even though shaving makes me ache so badly. And I decide I can’t get a wax even though I actually like the feeling of my legs being hairless because I just don’t deserve it. I haven’t done enough. I’m too much bad, not enough good.

I talk to myself like that all the time.

But I would totally tell my wife to do whatever she needs and wants to feel good about herself. I would say the same to my male partners.

What is it I want? And why is it so hard to figure that out *and* act on it? Why do I feel like I’m not good enough to do what I want?

My therapist tells me I only need to do what I want in this life. I keep looking at her like I don’t believe her. I think, to me, part of my personal definition of being a good person is doing good works. And if I’m not doing good works, I’m not being a good person. So then it makes it hard for me to feel like I ‘get’ to do things that are purely pleasurable for me.

But if I never let myself feel pleasure, how do I get out of misery?

Also, it’s hard to consistently do the good things I want to do, and I hate being inconsistent. It’s hard for me, I mean. Not knowing when my body will shut down on me makes it difficult.

Other people manage, and I tell myself that. I just…I’m not supposed to compare, and I haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to manage.

It’s particularly difficult when I’ve spent a lifetime being told–first by actual, physical people who were supposed to take care of me (my parents) that all my physical and mental ails were trivial/not real (from illness to broken limbs, not a thing was believed until hours/days had passed and I finally got them to take me to a doctor). Now, it’s hard for me to believe that about myself. I keep telling myself it’s not that bad, that I don’t have it as bad as other people, that I need to just pull myself up and get on with it, that I’m horrible for not just getting on with life, that all of this is just me being hysterical and manipulative and melodramatic (and hey, those are words from my past). It’s hard for me to take care of my body.

One of my partners is a sweet caretaker, but he’s the sort that wants to do for me. And he’s been so so helpful, but he’s not great at telling me to make an appointment. Not yet. I think he’ll get there. But I have to learn to do it on my own, because it really shouldn’t be on him, or on anyone else. I just…never learned how to do it, never learned how to value my body.

And that gives me this really really bad case of the shoulds all the time. I ‘should’ do all these things, but a lot of the time I can’t, because I actually physically can’t. Or I mentally can’t. And I need to be easier on myself about that.

Share this:

Like this:

About a year ago, I finally had a much-needed sleep study done. It was an at-home sleep study, to the surprise of everyone involved (myself, my doctor, my partners, my therapist). Maybe my insurance provider wasn’t surprised? Anyway, shortly after the test, my doctor’s office had to cancel my results appointment because they had a computer training class that day. I said I would reschedule.

And then I didn’t.

Some of that was depression. Some of that was brain fog and fatigue. Some of it was life and being bad at adulting. Some of it was exhaustion.

Finally, around March–my grandma had been doing okay-ish. I knew she was up and down, health-wise. I’d been up and down, too, depression-wise. I’d been through some suicidal ideation, broken through due to getting angry at my parents, and come back to it. I kept kind of…waiting on The Call that something was Going Worse with my grandma. But it hadn’t come, and so in March, I decided to finally make that doctor’s appointment again.

I went, and I found out that I have sleep apnea (to probably no one’s surprise who has ever heard me snore). My oxygen saturation level was dropping to 66% at night (hence my constant brain fogginess) and I was stopping breathing up to 15 times per hour. That’s…no wonder I stopped having my super-vivid dreams, and no wonder I have felt so tired all the time, and no wonder a lot of things, right?

So my doctor said I needed to go for another sleep evaluation, to get fitted for a cpap, in-clinic. So we scheduled that.

And then my grandma fell and cracked her head open on her bathroom floor.

My dad was there, thankfully. He got her to the hospital, but he had to clean all that up alone. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know if I would’ve had the strength.

Grandma’s health deteriorated pretty rapidly from there. It felt slow. But…that was March, and by the beginning of July, she was gone.

In between, I had my evaluation. That went okay. It was weird, to have the paste in my hair and to try to sleep in the clinic. I don’t sleep well in strange settings at the best of times. Being nervous about people watching me sleep, and having things attached to me…plus the fact that I somehow dislocated and relocated my shoulder while settling in for the night and so was in a lot of pain (only me!) meant I felt like I didn’t sleep much.

The lady who worked with me–a nurse? attendant? clinician?–seemed to think I’d feel so much better! when I woke up, that I’d feel an immediate difference. I don’t think I slept as much as she thought I did. I *did* feel some difference through the day, but I was still exhausted at night.

I was told I’d have my cpap within a couple of days.

A month later, I still didn’t have it, and I was having to yell at my doctor’s office that I didn’t have it. They’d wanted to schedule me for a ‘review of how I’m doing’ on it, and, well, it’s hard to do that without actually being on it.

I didn’t actually get it until about a month ago now, in August.

I missed some time with Grandma because of that, because for a little bit they kept calling me each week to say “It’s on its way” or “We don’t have the information from your doctor,” and my doctor kept insisting they had sent the information.

Then I missed some time with Grandma because we found out my wife has a very small, benign brain tumor on her pituitary gland.

The last time I saw Grandma, she clutched my hand…she knew, and I knew, and we both knew that we both knew it was the last time.

It’s been two months, and I miss her so much.

And I can actually feel that. And sit in it. And think about it. And remember things. Because this cpap…being able to breathe at night means my brain functions during the day.

I wish I’d been able to do that while she was still here.

Though for the first few weeks, this thing was a terror. I’d been told it would aid my depression, my anxiety, make things so much better. Instead, I got vivid nightmares from which I couldn’t wake myself; during the day, my brain busied itself remembering and reliving all the worst parts of my life. I felt haunted.

That has somewhat eased now, although I still have occasional nightmares and very very vivid dreams. I started playing my way through all the Escape The Room games I could find on my phone to occupy my brain with something other than Bad Thoughts.

I hid in bed for…it feels like a long time. It’s been a couple of weeks, I guess. I’m not in it now, but it has felt like a long time.

My brain is working now. That’s something. My sleep schedule is…weird. I think I need to start recording it again. I keep falling asleep anywhere from 7p-11p (if I can keep myself awake that long–it’s seriously a challenge) and waking around 1a-5a. Sometimes I wake a little later, but not usually. I get tired pretty easily through the day, and sometimes have a 2-hour nap. One hour doesn’t seem to suffice.

I have discovered that I really cannot go without the cpap. Sleeping, even for 10 minutes, without it leaves me feeling like I’ve been choked and like my head is full of cotton. Is that how I felt all the time a month ago? It’s so hard not to doze off somewhere sometimes–I want to be able to drift into a pleasant nap on the couch like I used to do occasionally–but I know that if I do, I’ll wake in that strangled state.

It’s nice to be able to think. I’m still tired, though. Something else is definitely ‘wrong’ with my body, something other than the sleep apnea. My brain is sharper, and I’m waking naturally and sleeping naturally, so I think that is ‘fixed’ as it can be for now. So…I need to figure out what the rest is.

Anyway, I can sleep. I can breathe while doing it. I can grieve. I am struggling still with depression and anxiety, so the cpap hasn’t fixed that, but maybe it’s helping? I actually pulled myself out of bed for a walk today. And I have been fixing some of my own food. Maybe I will regain some of my independence. Maybe I can find my way to a new healthy.